Category Archives: Interviews & Profiles

In Ancient Greece, audiences gathered by the thousands to share in their appreciation for the theater and to witness stories which conveyed their experiences on stage. Today, the closest anyone can come to that unified assemblage is at the movies. While the latest blockbuster film is playing at your local AMC or Cobb, Coral Gables Art Cinema focuses on films of a different kind. Through their After Hours Program, the Gables Cinema is bringing back “the best films you never saw on the big screen (or maybe you did) from late-night cult classics to foreign favorites and even summer blockbusters every Saturday at 11:45 pm,” as advertised on their website. The big draw for me involves their 35 mm and 70 mm film screenings which set them apart from other independent cinemas. From the screening of Ghostbusters in 70 mm to their screenings of Metropolis and Nosferatu played with an original, live score, Coral Gables Art Cinema is reviving the love and appreciation of film as an art form.

Dr. Glenn Hutchinson is the interim director at FIU’s Center for Excellence in Writing. He earned a Ph.D in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Hutchinson teaches the peer-tutoring course, Processes of Writing (ENC 3491) at both FIU campuses and enjoys writing about service-learning and the rights of undocumented students. He also writes plays and acts, many of which have gone on to be performed at local theaters. We talk with him this week about writing, film, theater, and everything in between.

Since 2004, Dr. Frank Luca has split his time as a professor of History at FIU and Chief Librarian at The Wolfsonian. He received a Ph. D. from FIU in 2005 with a focus on Ethnohistory and Colonial Latin America. He has successfully fused his passion for both American history and film with his courses on America and Movies (AMH 3317).

Professor Elizabeth Scarbrough is a recent and welcome addition to the Florida International University’s philosophy department. With an impressive academic background under her belt, a Masters and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and Washington, respectively, and a burning love for all things art, she’s a warm, insightful teacher looking to bring new topics to students at FIU, starting with the study of philosophical questions regarding cinema.

On March 27, FIU’s School of Computer Information and Sciences and the Department of English co-hosted a public lecture with guest speaker Ted Chiang. Chiang is a critically acclaimed author whose novella “Story of Your Life” was the basis for the 2016 Oscar nominated film Arrival. His lecture, titled “Why the Brain is Not a Computer”, focused on the common misconceptions of Folk Biology in the media and how they hurt our ability to tell a narrative. His main focus was the Sci-Fi genre, but he explained how folk biology hinders story structure in general. The lecture provided insight into the methodology that Chiang uses to create stories.

Last week FIU’s Black Student Union hosted an interview and Q&A event staring Issa Rae, YouTube personality and HBO star as their speaker in honor of Black History month. During the event Issa Rae speaks on what it was like to grow up being an awkward black girl in a society where she didn’t necessarily fit into the social norms at the time of what it meant “to be black”, and how these experiences help her shape her creativity. Rae reveals that’s she would like to use her platform to reshape the way that society views people of color in media specifically the view of Black women who are being oppressed on two fronts for being women and being of color. During the Q&A section Rae gives advice to aspiring writers and producers on how to stay true to themselves in their work and know that when they are doing something they are passionate about they have to be prepared to defend it.